The Infant Moses and the burning Coal

This intriguing, newly discovered painting was created in Artemisia Gentileschi’s studio in Naples, where the artist established a thriving workshop in the 1630s, in which her sole surviving child - her daughter Prudenzia - presumably trained. It was through Artemisia's studio in Naples that the artist was able to avail herself of fruitful collaborations with local painters and diffuse her figurative repertoire (see G. Porzio, ‘Artemisia a Napoli. Novità, problemi, prospettive’, in Artemisia Gentileschi a Napoli, exhibition catalogue, Naples, 2022, pp. 27-49). Artemisia's activity in Naples marks a particularly complex historical moment in her artistic career and, as Porzio noted in the above exhibition, the commercialization of the painter's activity is a clear demonstration of her entrepreneurial skills and astute self-promotion: after all, Artemisia was ‘the only woman in Naples at the head of a flourishing workshop, the most celebrated in the city, within an artistic world dominated by men.’ (R. Morselli, ‘Exhibitions’, in Burlington Magazine, CLXV, March 2023, p. 319).

Artemisia settled in the Spanish-controlled city of Naples in 1630. Despite complaining bitterly about the city in her letters and persistently seeking patronage elsewhere, Artemisia spent twenty-five years in Naples – more than half of her adult life. She was invited to Naples by the Spanish viceroy Fernando Afán de Ribera, third Duke of Alcalá (1583-1637), and Artemisia soon became part of the city’s vibrant cultural life. She had a strong influence on Neapolitan painting and was engaged in a number of collaborative projects with other leading local painters such as Domenico Gargiulo, called Micco Spadaro (1609/10-about 1675) and Massimo Stanzione (1585-1656). Others are thought to have transited through her workshop; namely Bernardo Cavallino (1616-1656?) and Onofrio Palumbo (or Palomba) (1606-before 1672), the latter being specifically named as a collaborator in contemporary sources and documents (see L. Abetti, ‘Appendice B’, in Porzio, op. cit., 2022, pp. 110-111, nos. 17 and 21). Her fame attracted visits to her studio in Naples from foreigners passing through the city; namely Joachim von Sandrart from Germany and Bullen Reymes and Nicholas Lanier from England. (S. Barker, ‘The Muse of History’, in L. Treves ed., Artemisia, exhibition catalogue, London, 2020, pp. 81, 88, footnote 17).

Prof. Riccardo Lattuada, whose detailed study accompanies this lot, believes the figures in this painting to be by Artemisia herself, with the possible collaboration of Domenico Gargiulo for the landscape elements. There is no doubt that the work is very closely related to paintings in The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota, depicting Israelites celebrating the Return of David and Bathsheba at her Bath (figs. 1 and 2). Though the attribution of the Ringling works has been the subject of much scholarly debate over the past fifty years, they were recently exhibited as by Artemisia and are widely recognized as having been produced in Artemisia’s workshop in Naples (and described as such in the museum’s catalogue: V. Brilliant, Italian, Spanish, and French Paintings in The Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota 2017, pp. 101-104, cat. I.58 and I.59). There are very clear points of comparison between the present composition and each of the Ringling canvases. The three main protagonists here are to be found in corresponding poses in the right foreground of Israelites celebrating the Return of David: the woman in white, with left leg brought forward, arms raised and turning toward the right, parallels the principal female tambourine player; the young man in blue and yellow stands in contrapposto, as does the young David; and the bearded old man seen in profile, with left arm extended and the heel of his left foot raised to suggest movement, is echoed directly in the rightmost tambourine-player of the Ringling canvas. A variation of this figure reappears in the Ringling’s Bathsheba at her Bath, in the figure of the maidservant who raises the heel of her sandaled foot with Cavallinesque elegance; a motif that serves once again to anchor the composition at the extreme right.

As is the case with the two Ringling pictures, The Infant Moses and the burning Coal appears to be the work of multiple hands – one for the figures and another for the setting. The architectural backdrop and landscape are likely to be by Domenico Gargiulo, with whom Artemisia is known to have collaborated in the 1630s; in, for example, her Lot and his Daughters (Toledo Museum of Art) and David and Bathsheba (Columbus Museum of Art), the latter being almost certainly identifiable with a picture described by the biographer Bernardo de Dominici as in the collection of Luigi Romeo in Naples. The mise-en-scène here shows clear parallels with the Ringling’s equally theatrical Bathsheba at her Bath: in both works the figures are posed on a wide sun-drenched terrace, as if upon a stage, and a stone balustrade runs behind them.

The authorship of the Ringling’s Bathsheba at her Bath has been hotly debated over recent decades (for a summary of attributions see Brilliant, op. cit., p. 101, and Porzio, op. cit., p. 202). Erich Schleier was the first to propose that Bathsheba at her Bath was by Artemisia Gentileschi (1971) and this attribution was taken up by Nicola Spinosa, who believed it to be a work of collaboration with Viviano Codazzi (1984); an opinion he upheld more recently (2011), ascribing the painting to Artemisia, Gargiulo (for the landscape) and Codazzi (for the architecture). The attribution of Israelites celebrating the Return of David and Bathsheba at her Bath has also oscillated between Artemisia and her Neapolitan contemporaries, such as Bernardo Cavallino, and in his monograph Raymond Ward Bissell underlined the author's ‘familiarity with Artemisia’s art’ and referred to the ‘supposed participation’ of the painter herself in Bathsheba at her Bath (R. Ward Bissell, Artemisia Gentileschi and the Authority of Art, 1999, p. 305, under X-4). In the recent exhibition in Naples, Porzio assigned both the Ringling paintings to ‘Artemisia Gentileschi’ (both in the catalogue and on object labels), explaining that they were a product of her workshop, painted directly under her supervision, acknowledging the difficulty in assigning the figures in their entirety to Artemisia herself. It is undeniable that The Infant Moses and the burning Coal reveals a close awareness of Artemisia’s work and the figures are clearly executed by a single hand, painted contemporaneously with the architectural setting (with which they are ‘at one’). As noted above, Riccardo Lattuada considers The Infant Moses and the burning Coal to be an ‘autograph work by Artemisia Gentileschi for all the figures, with the possible collaboration of Domenico Gargiulo for the background.’

All three paintings under discussion here – the two Ringling canvases and The Infant Moses and the burning Coal – are of similar (though not identical) dimensions: the present work’s 101.6 x 129.5 cm compares to 83.2 x 115.6 cm for Israelites celebrating the Return of David and 84.5 x 115.6 cm for Bathsheba at her Bath. It has been suggested that the two Ringling paintings were conceived as pendants, perhaps serving originally as overdoors, given their similar size and the fact that they both illustrate episodes from the life of David. With The Infant Moses and the burning Coal portraying another Old Testament figure, it is not impossible that all three pictures once belonged to the same scheme.

The story depicted here is that of Moses and the miracle of burning coals, an unusual subject that cannot be found in the Old Testament but rather has its source in ancient rabbinic texts. It was recounted by the Jewish priest, scholar and historian Flavius Josephus in The Antiquities of the Jews (completed in AD 93), a book that traces the history of the Jews and was translated into Italian from the mid-sixteenth century onwards. At the age of three, the infant Moses is said to have removed the gold crown from Pharaoh’s head and placed it upon his own before throwing it to the ground: Moses is more frequently shown in the act of trampling on Pharaoh’s crown, as in the two celebrated paintings by Nicolas Poussin (one in a private collection and the other in the Musée du Louvre, Paris). Horrified by Moses’s actions, Pharaoh’s counsellors condemned the infant’s behavior and advised him to kill the boy, believing this was a sign confirming the prophecy that a boy would destroy the kingdom of Pharaoh and liberate Israel. In order to ascertain whether Moses’s actions were intentional, they decided to put the boy to the test: a shiny piece of gold was placed amid burning coals and offered to Moses, to see which of these the boy would choose. Guided by the angel Gabriel, Moses picked up a piece of coal and brought it to his mouth, thereby burning his tongue. In so doing, Moses demonstrated his unwavering faith and devotion to God, though he remained forever tongue-tied after this incident. Here, the infant Moses brings a glowing hot coal to his lips while the young man (presumably Pharaoh, given that he holds a sceptre) points to the crown lying upturned on the ground. Though relatively rare, the same episode was painted in the mid-seventeenth century by Valerio Castello in a work now in the Palazzo Bianco, Genoa (fig. 3). One can only assume, given the relative obscurity of the subject, that the painting presented here was a specific commission – perhaps related to that of the two canvases now in The Ringling Museum of Art – and was not painted on spec for the open market.